Justice Sotomayor’s side hustle during a hectic term? A kids’ musical.
She told a theater crowd in Kansas City, Mo., that she believes her biggest legacy lies outside her trailblazing role in the law.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Sonia Sotomayor has earned a prominent spot in the nation’s legal pantheon, becoming the nation’s first Latina Supreme Court justice, voting to legalize same-sex marriage and speaking for the nation’s aggrieved liberals in a sharp dissent to the decision overturning Roe v. Wade.
But her trailblazing legal career is not her most meaningful achievement, Sotomayor recently told a small audience far from the glare of Washington. What is? Her writing for children.
“Of all my legacies, this is the one I’m most proud of,” Sotomayor told about 200 parents, children, actors and musicians gathered in a church hall to rehearse a musical adaptation of a children’s story she wrote. “You have brought to life a book that was in my head for over 35 years.”
Soon, the lights dimmed, actors took the stage, and music swelled to open the first dress rehearsal for “Just Ask!: Be Brave, Be Different, Be You.” The piece features adult actors portraying children with various disabilities working together to save a community garden from development.
Sotomayor came to this Midwestern city after an unusually tempestuous term at the high court. The 70-year-old justice has faced calls to retire and told an audience at Harvard University that she sometimes closes the door to her office and cries after rulings by the court’s conservative supermajority.
On the last day of this past term, she issued a dire dissent warning that the majority’s decision to grant Donald Trump and other former presidents broad immunity from prosecution for official acts was placing American democracy at risk.
Through it all, Sotomayor has carved out time for an unusual side hustle, helping craft the development of the musical for a small community theater that usually draws hundreds to each performance. That the court’s senior liberal justice would hash out scenes, rework characters and scribble notes on lyrics while grappling with the nation’s weightiest legal issues — crafting a treatment the way she might an opinion — surprised the production’s director, Fran Sillau, and lyricist, Mark Kurtz.
“Every scene that the audience will see she has touched,” Sillau said. “If she wasn’t a justice, she would be a drama research assistant.”
Sotomayor, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told “The Daily Show” after the 2019 publication of her book that she believes her children’s writing offers the opportunity to have an impact her legal writing does not.
She talked about growing up in a Bronx public housing development, saying there were no attorneys or judges in her building. She had never heard of the Supreme Court until high school, she said, let alone dreamed about becoming a justice.
“If I can affect the lives of children — if I can inspire them to be bigger, better, braver than they believe they can be — then I’ve left a real legacy,” Sotomayor said. “For me, when I write for children or speak to them, it’s to create for them that lasting gift that I hope will inspire them to do something they haven’t even dreamed about.”
The six books Sotomayor has written draw on her singular story as the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who rose from poverty to the nation’s highest court, offering a sense of possibility but also a sense of how her struggles have led to growth.
“Just Ask” pulls from Sotomayor’s battle with diabetes, which she was diagnosed with at age 7. She taught herself to sterilize a needle and inject herself with insulin, which forms the opening scene of her memoir, “My Beloved World.”
Sillau, who has cerebral palsy, said he was drawn to “Just Ask” because of its themes. At the urging of a colleague, he placed a cold call to Sotomayor’s literary agent to pitch the idea of adapting it as a musical.
Sillau and Kurtz put together a treatment and sent it to the justice. They expected a response in six months, but Sotomayor expressed interest in working together just three weeks later, Sillau said.
The actors in the musical version of “Just Ask” have disabilities and health issues such as autism and asthma, corresponding to those of their characters — a side of themselves the actors said they had not had the opportunity to show before onstage.
more:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/08/28/sotomayor-supreme-court-justice-musical/
Do something positive.
| 